Ttyphoon

<h1>TTYphoon</h1>

• Multimedia Terminal Emulator
• Screenshots
  • Output Blocks
  • Structured Text
  • Tables
  • Images
  • Tmux Support
  • Highlighted Search Results
  • Plus more
• How It Works
• Whats Left To Do
  • Escape Codes
    • VT100
    • VT52 mode
    • VT200 mode
    • Tektronix 4014 mode
    • Window management codes
    • Extended features
    • Common application support
  • Application Usability
• Supported Platforms
• Install Guide
  • VT Debugging
  • AI Tracing
• How To Support

Multimedia Terminal Emulator

The aim of this project is to provide an easy to use terminal emulator that supports inlining multimedia widgets using native code as opposed to web technologies like Electron.

Currently the project is very alpha.

The idea behind this terminal emulator is that is can be used by any $SHELL, however hooks will be built into Murex so the terminal will be instantly usable even before wider support across other shells and command line applications is adopted.

At its heart, TTYphoon is a regular terminal emulator. Like Kitty, iTerm2, and PuTTY (to name a few). But where TTYphoon differs is that it also supports inlining rich content. Some terminal emulators support inlining images. Others might also allow videos. But none bar some edge case Electron terminals offer collapsible trees for JSON printouts. Easy to navigate directory views. Nor any other interactive elements that we have come to expect on modern user interfaces.

The few terminal emulators that do attempt to offer this usually fail to be good, or even just compatible, with all the CLI tools that we've come to depend on.

TTYphoon aims to do both well. Even if you never want for any interactive widgets, TTYphoon will be a good terminal emulator. And for those who want a little more GUI in their CLI, TTYphoon will be a great modern user interface.

Screenshots

Output Blocks

Command output is grouped into blocks to make it easier to visually see the separation between different command output.

Those blocks are coloured too, to help identify whether a command succeeded or failed.

Those blocks can be highlighted by hovering over them

And even collapsed, hidden from view

Structured Text

IDE-like tools for working with structured text, like JSON. Hover over a branch to highlight its child nodes

Click to collapse that block of text

Tables

Output can be presented as tables. Which can be sorted and even filtered using SQL. All without having to rerun the commands that generated that output

Images

Support for inlined images, where images are treated as images. for example they can be copied to clipboard

Tmux Support

Tmux support built in using tmux's control plane. This allows for the power of tmux but with the easy of use and elegance of being fully integrated into the terminal emulator

(in this screenshot, tmux's prefix key was rebinded to F2 in ~/.tmux.conf)

Highlighted Search Results

Search terms can be highlighted to quickly find instances of that term

Plus more

TTYphoon has only been in development for a little over a year and features a purpose built, hardware accelerated, rendering engine to facilitate this hybrid of text and media. So expect many more feature to come!

How It Works

TTYphoon uses SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) which is a simple hardware-assisted multimedia library. This enables the terminal emulator to be both performant and also cross-platform. Essentially providing some of the conveniences that people have come to love from tools like Electron while still offering the benefits of native code.

The multimedia and interactive components will be passed from the controlling terminal applications via ANSI escape sequences. Before groan, yes I agree that in-band escape sequences are a lousy way of encoding meta-information. However to succeed at being a good terminal emulator, it needs to support some historic design decisions no matter how archaic they might seem today. This allows TTYphoon to work with existing terminal applications and for third parties to easily add support for their applications to render rich content in TTYphoon without breaking compatibility for legacy terminal emulators.

Whats Left To Do

In short, a lot!! Some of what has been detailed above is still aspirational. Some of it has already been delivered but in a very alpha state. And while there is lots of error handling and unit tests, test coverage is still pretty low and exceptions will crash the terminal (quite deliberately, because I want to see where the application fails).

Below is a high level TODO list of features and compatibility. If an item is ticked but not working as expected, then please raise an issue in Github.

Escape Codes

VT100

• C1 codes
  • [x] common: can run most CLI applications
  • [x] broad: can run older or more CLI applications
  • [ ] complete: xterm compatible
• CSI codes
  • [x] common: can run most CLI applications
  • [x] broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • [ ] complete: xterm compatible
• SGR codes
  • [x] common: can run most CLI applications
  • [x] broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • [ ] complete: xterm compatible
  • [ ] extended underline: kitty compatible
• OSC codes
  • [x] common: can run most CLI applications
  • [x] broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • [ ] complete: xterm compatible
• DCS codes
  • [ ] common: can run most CLI applications
  • [ ] broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • [ ] complete: xterm compatible
• [x] Alt character sets
• [x] Wide characters
  • [ ] vt100 (ASCII characters)
  • [x] Unicode (eg logograph-centric languages and emoticons)
• Keyboard
  • [x] Ctrl modifiers
  • [x] Alt modifiers
  • [x] Shift modifiers
  • [x] special keys (eg function keys, number pad, etc)
    • [ ] glitch free (some bugs still exist)
  • [x] tmux support for modifiers
• Mouse tracking
  • [ ] common: can run most CLI applications
  • [ ] broad: can run older or more complicated CLI applications
  • [ ] complete: xterm compatible

VT52 mode

• [ ] cursor movements
• [ ] special modes

VT200 mode

Some compatibility already exists. Detailed breakdown coming...

Tektronix 4014 mode

• [ ] graphics plotting
• [ ] text rendering

Window management codes

eg xterm and similar terminal emulators

• [x] titlebar can be changed
• [ ] ~~window can be moved and resized (WILL NOT IMPLEMENT)~~
• [ ] window can be minimized and restored

Extended features

• [ ] Hyperlink support
  • [x] Auto-hyperlink files
  • [x] Auto-hyperlink URLs
  • [ ] ANSI escape sequence supported
• [ ] Bracketed paste mode
• [x] Inlining images
  • [x] TTYphoon codes
  • [ ] iterm2 compatible
  • [ ] Kitty compatible
  • [x] sixel graphics
  • [ ] ReGIS graphics
• [x] Code folding
• [x] Table sorting
  • [x] alpha: available but expect changes to the API
  • [x] stable: available to use in Murex

Common application support

• [x] Supports tmux
  • [x] usable from CLI
  • [x] glitch-free from CLI
  • [x] tmux control mode supported
• [x] Supports vim
  • [x] usable
  • [x] glitch-free
• [x] Supports murex
  • [x] usable
  • [x] glitch-free

Application Usability

• [x] Terminal can be resized
• [x] Scrollback history
  • [x] usability hints added
• [x] discoverability hints added
• [x] Typeface can be changed
• [x] Colour scheme can be changed
  • [x] supports iTerm2 colour themes
• [ ] Bell can be changed
• [x] Default term size can be changed
• [x] Default command / shell can be changed

Supported Platforms

Support for the following platforms is planned:

• [x] Linux
  • [x] tested on Arch
  • [ ] tested on Ubuntu
  • [ ] tested on Rocky
• [ ] BSD
  • [ ] tested on FreeBSD
  • [ ] tested on NetBSD
  • [ ] tested on OpenBSD
  • [ ] tested on DragonflyBSD
• [x] macOS
  • [ ] tested on 12.x, Monterey
  • [ ] tested on 13.x, Ventura
  • [x] tested on 14.x, Sonoma
  • [x] tested on 15.x, Sequoia
• [x] Windows
  • [x] PTY support implemented
  • [ ] tested on Windows 10
  • [ ] tested on Windows 11

Install Guide

Currently TTYphoon can only be compiled from source.

To do so you will need the following installed:

• C compiler (eg GNU C)
• Go compiler
• SDL libraries
  • sdl2
  • sdl2_mixer
• pkg-config

Aside from that, it's as easy as running go build . from the git repository root directory.

VT Debugging

The terminal emulator functions can provide verbose logging for debugging. To enable this, build with -tags debug flag. Please note that this will add a lot of noise to the stdout of the terminal used to launch TTYphoon.

AI Tracing

The AI features, prompts sent to LLMs and messages between MCP tools can be traced for debugging. To enable this, build with -tags trace. Trace messages are sent to the stdout of the terminal used to launch TTYphoon.

How To Support

Regardless of your time and skil